The social media world has gone crazy with the new update from Facebook. Publishers and advertisers are freaking out that the platform updates will once again affect their results and disrupt the fragile strategy they sketched out for using this channel. Facebook seems to not care and marches forward in their mission that ‘time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent’.
They have not said much on the specifics of what will change and social media marketers will have to wait, benchmark and adapt to change. Nothing new there. What Facebook management did say was that some trusted sources and specific content types might get a boost: live videos generating discussion, star social media creators, celebrities, groups posts, local business events and trusted news sources. Apparently, these foster conversation and build community.
Today I want to talk about groups. Do they actually encourage conversation and community building? Yes and no.
I joined a lot of groups in my Facebook life (more than 100) and have a few lessons I want to share on this before you rush out to build new groups and try to push your message there. To start with, I’ll make a list of the criteria I think we need to check before answering yes to the question at hand.
Goal of the group — why are the members there?
I find that the most engaging groups are the ones where every member knows the reason why it was created. And they not only agree, they adhere to its mission and are willing to contribute time and resources to accomplish it.
Group admins need to make sure that the goal is easily accessible and once in a while remind users of why they are all there.
Who builds and manages it?
The admin or team of admins in charge of community management are the ones that make or break it. They need to stay true to the group mission and make sure that everyone does. In order to do so, they need a set of rules to abide by in order to safeguard the group mission, its values and make sure everyone behaves in a manner that helps the community grow and thrive. They have the difficult task of identifying haters and difficult members and finding a way to either make them respect the rules or even ban them from the group if necessary.
What kind of activities the members of the group get involved in
Without offline meetings there is no community. You need to provide the group with opportunities to meet in person and foster personal relationships. This way they’ll build trust and they can try to engage together in projects and see them through. Personal relationships also ensure the group is strong enough to grow, to support and educate each other and, why not, sanction members that do not follow the rules.
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